‘Roe v Wade’ film aims to accurately portray history of landmark decision

By CNA Staff

Denver Newsroom, Feb 25, 2021 / 00:45 am

The co-writer and star of a new film chronicling the courtroom drama of the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court case said in a recent interview that the film aims to be a truthful and historically accurate account of how the landmark decision came to be, and stars actors with varying views on the topic of abortion. 

“Roe v Wade,” co-written and co-directed by Loeb and Cathy Allyn, is set to premiere at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) Feb. 28. 

Nick Loeb, a businessman-turned-filmmaker and actor, plays the part of Dr. Bernard Nathanson, a prolific abortion doctor who later converted to Christianity and became pro-life. 

In a Feb. 23 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Loeb said despite the film’s subject matter, it is not a “conservative,” “religious,” or even a “pro-life” film. 

“What we tried to do is really just lay out the facts of how Roe v. Wade came to be and how it was decided. People can take one view or another. I've had a lot of people who think it's in the middle,” he commented to The Hollywood Reporter. 

Still, Loeb himself is pro-life and the personal journey of Loeb’s character, Nathanson, is one of powerful pro-life conversion. 

“Why some folks may think it's a conservative film or why it aligns with those views is because the protagonist actually converts. He starts off pro-choice and becomes pro-life through his journey. It's a true story,” Loeb commented. 

Nathanson personally performed an estimated 5,000 abortions and oversaw tens of thousands more, including one on his own pregnant girlfriend in the 1960s. 

Nathanson was previously a strong proponent of legalized abortion, and has been accused of inflating statistics on illegal abortions in the U.S. In 1969, he helped to found the lobbying organization now known as NARAL Pro-Choice America. 

He left the practice of abortion in the early 1970s, and became a Christian and a pro-life activist until his death in 2011.

Loeb said he experienced an evolution of his own views on abortion similar to that of Nathanson. As a young man, he was pro-choice; in his 20s, he had two partners who obtained abortions. 

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“[I]t really had an emotional impact on me. As I've gotten older, the more regret I have. If I knew then what I know now, I wouldn't have had them,” he commented. 

“Learning more about the science behind it and when a human being is actually created, I slowly started to change my views. I went on the same journey as Bernard [Nathanson] and that's why I was really interested in playing this role.”

Several of the film’s other stars are also known to be pro-life, such as Jon Voight, who stars as Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger. 

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In 2020, "Roe v. Wade" premiered at the Vienna Independent Film Festival, where Voight took home the award for best supporting actor, the Federalist reported. 

Loeb said not all the actors in the film are pro-life, but at least one of the actors— whom he declined to name— converted from pro-choice views to pro-life over the course of filmmaking. 

Loeb said writing the film took extensive research into the Roe v. Wade case, and it was important to him to have a female co-writer, rather than him alone. 

“The case gets thrown around all the time without a full understanding of how it came to be and what happened. I really want people to understand, whether they're pro-choice or pro-life, that when a woman gets pregnant, there's a baby there,” he concluded.

“It's not a clump of cells or a gob of goo. There's a real living being that has a heartbeat in the first couple of weeks that you can hear. People should understand that so they don't take abortion so lightly.”

The film is set to be available in April on Amazon Prime and iTunes.

Loeb’s comments are not the first time he has spoken in defense of unborn children. 

In 2016, Loeb and his then-fiance Sofia Vergara created and froze several embryos through IVF. When the couple separated, Loeb sued for custody of the embryos in order to implant them in a surrogate mother. A Louisiana court dismissed that lawsuit earlier this month. 

In 2019, Loeb told the National Catholic Register that Facebook had blocked his team from promoting a previous Hollywood Reporter article on the film.

The Catholic News Agency (CNA) Staff are a team of journalists dedicated to reporting news concerning the Catholic Church around the world. Our bureaus are located in Denver, Washington, and Rome. We have sister language agencies in Kenya, Germany, Peru, Brazil, and Italy. CNA is a service of EWTN News. You can contact us at [email protected] with questions.